Ostrava's history runs from Palaeolithic hunters who burned the world's first coal to a Piast border castle, a bishop's market town, and the concrete bunkers of 1938. Three days of monuments, museums and neighbourhoods that outlived the mines.
The 23,000-year-old Venus of Petřkovice was dug from this hillside in 1953, and hunters here burned coal in the Stone Age — the earliest known use on Earth. Open daily 9:00–18:00; pit-cage descent included.
Ostrava's oldest standing building, first documented in 1297 and built over a 13th-century core. Restoration in 1998–2003 uncovered Gothic wall paintings and a burial ground under the nave; the square around it was the original settlement.
Housed in the 1539 town hall, the collection covers Bishop Bruno von Schauenburg's founding of the town in 1267, guild charters, and a working 1929 astronomical clock. Tue–Sun 9:00–17:00, closed Mondays.
Founded around 1280 by the Piast dukes of Cieszyn to guard the Ostravice ford on the trade route between Moravia and Poland. Mining subsidence sank the whole structure 16 metres — the medieval cellars are now below river level.
Built 1925–1930 to designs by Vladimír Fischer and Karel Kotas, its 85.6 m tower is the tallest town hall tower in the country — a statement of Ostrava's interwar wealth. Lift to the 73 m gallery, open daily from 9:00.
Raised 1883–1889 for a population that quadrupled with the coalfield, this neo-Renaissance church holds 4,000 people and is the second largest in Moravia. Bomb damage in 1944 destroyed the original glass; the interior was restored in the 1990s.
A national cultural monument preserved exactly as the last shift left it in 1993, after 150 years of hauling. Lamp room, bathhouse with 1,500 hanging chains and the 1915 electric winding engines all still stand. Tue–Sun 9:00–17:00.
A 315 m mountain of mining waste tipped between 1920 and 1960, still smouldering internally at up to several hundred degrees — snow never settles and steam rises from vents. The summit gives the full panorama of the coalfield.
Four heavy infantry blockhouses from the 1935–1938 border defence line, abandoned without a shot after the Munich Agreement. MO-S 5 'Na Trati' is fully fitted out with guns and periscopes. Open April–October, Tue–Sun.
Built from 1952 as a model socialist town for miners, Poruba's Hlavní třída is lined with sgraffito facades, arcades and the monumental Oblouk gateway block — the most complete Sorela ensemble in the Czech lands.
The ironworks built its own town from 1876: brick workers' terraces, a school, hospital and the 1886 St Paul's Church around Mírové náměstí, all in the same red brick. One of Europe's earliest planned industrial settlements.
Ostrava's Moorish-style Great Synagogue was burned by the SS in June 1939; a stone memorial marks the site near Čs. legií. In October 1939 the city was the departure point of the Nisko transports, the first deportations of Jews from the Reich.